If you've ever been fired, you're in good company. That's what actress and writer Annabelle Gurwitch discovered when she was fired by her idol Woody Allen, who added, "You look retarded." In confiding her tale of woe to others, she realized there is a world of people out there with similar laugh-out-loud experiences. How did Bob Saget learn he was being phased out of his job on The Morning Program? "One day I showed up and my hosting chair was gone!" A collection of anecdotes from people who've all gotten the ax, the boot, or been canned at some point in their lives, Fired! boasts an all-star cast from Tim Allen to Jeff Garlin and features contributions from people all over the country. Uproariously funny and refreshingly true, this book proves it's not the bounce that counts, it's the bounce back. "Trump may have popularized the phrase 'You're fired,' but he certainly hasn't made it any easier to hear. [Gurwitch] is making the saying a little more tolerable." -- Jane magazine "A hilarious new book. It's very cathartic and funny!" -- Peter Rothberg, The Nation "It reads like sweet revenge." -- The Onion "A merry compendium of failure...Gurwitch gets the last laugh." -- Greg Beato, The Washington Post "Sometimes the best revenge is losing well." -- The New York Times "Been canned lately? Take solace from others who've been there in Fired!" -- New York Post, #1 on the Hot List Annabelle Gurwitch is an actress and writer best known to television audiences as the cohost of the cult TV hit Dinner and a Movie on TBS. She is a contributing writer and commentator on NPR's Day to Day and has appeared in numerous television shows and movies. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son. Annabelle recently appeared in The Shaggy Dog with Tim Allen, stars in the indie Melvin Goes to Dinner with Jack Black, and was recently seen in Boston Legal going toe to toe with Candace Bergen. Ironically, Candace fired Annabelle as her secretary in Murphy Brown .The documentary film Fired! will be coming to theatres in the Fall of 2006 and will then play on The Sundance Channel. Before hosting Real Time on HBO for the last twenty-one years , Bill Maher created and hosted Politically Incorrect on ABC. He lives in Los Angeles, California. Fired! Tales of the Canned, Canceled, Downsized, and Dismissed Touchstone Copyright © 2007 Annabelle Gurwitch All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-7432-9440-9 Chapter One The Job So Terrible You Can Only Hope to Be Fired Work is the province of cattle. - Dorothy Parker I do not like work, even when someone else does it. - Mark Twain I have only been fired once. I was let go from an office job where the boss told me that he was firing me because he wanted someone to work for him who, when he said, "Jump!" would say, "How high?" Ironically, the job was in the offices of the multiple sclerosis society, where the majority of our clients scooted around in motorized wheelchairs. - Rainn Wilson, actor That's a Fact Andy Borowitz I did a number of things in the '80s I'm not proud of. On more than one occasion I shouted out the phrase, "Everybody Wang Chung tonight." But there's one thing I did that was so heinous, I've never told anyone about it. In 1984 I wrote for the TV show The Facts of Life . I'm sure everyone remembers the cultural phenomenon that was The Facts of Life . But for those of you who somehow missed it, The Facts of Life was a coming-of-age saga about four teenage girls at an exclusive boarding school in Peekskill, New York. There was Blair, the sarcastic beautiful one; Natalie, the sarcastic chubby one; Jo, the sarcastic tomboy; and Tootie, the sarcastic sistah. Watching over all of them was their mentor, Edna Garrett, also known as Mrs. Garrett or, when the girls were in full Fonzie mode, Mrs. G. Oh, and here's one more piece of Facts of Life trivia: It was the worst television show ever produced. Now, given how monumentally it sucked, you may wonder, why did I agree to work on it? Well, quite simply, for the money. You see, I was the sarcastic whore on The Facts of Life . But you have to give me a break: I was just out of college, I was broke, I didn't have a car. I had to take the bus, which in L.A. is tantamount to eating out of a Dumpster. I remember my first day on the show, going in to pitch stories to the producers. These were two middle-aged women charged with the responsibility of making sure The Facts of Life did not lose its edge. And the show was at a critical point: It was moving from the safe confines of the boarding school to a whole new setting, a gourmet cheese shop cleverly named Edna's Edibles. It was a move fraught with risk. There was no margin for error. And that was the hornets' nest I was stepping into. As I sat down in the producers' office, I noticed that they each had coffee mugs with the Facts of Life logo on them. I was like, "Cool mugs, where'd you get th